Abstract:

Objectives:
The objective of this study is to examine the influence of young athletes' volitional competencies on their juggling motor learning abilities when their coach provides randomly positive or negative instructions.
Given the limited number of talented athletes who are physically capable of competing at the international level, this study aims to enhance the support provided to these athletes. Consequently, the relationships between the coach's instructions and the athlete's behaviour are explored in the context of optimising motor learning outcomes.

Methods:
A total of 27 students (8 girls; 19 boys) aged between 15 and 19 years (mean age 16.96 ± 1.16) participated in the study. The students were recruited from an elite sports school in Berlin and, due to their age and high level of athletic performance, were selected for the national team. The groups were formed and compared with respect to the following variables: coach instructions and gender. Furthermore, the subscales of the SSI-K3 were administered in order to confirm whether there were any correlations with the groups under comparison, in light of the present study.

Results:
The present study demonstrates that there are significant differences between the two groups. The random negative reinforcement group exhibited inferior outcomes (M = 4.27, SD = 1.1) in the motor learning process of juggling, demonstrating a statistically significant difference (p = .03) from the positive reinforcement group (M = 4.9, SD = .59, Cohen's d = 0.748).
A negative correlation was observed between stress and learning (r = -0.25), however, this was not found to be statistically significant (p = .11). A statistically significant correlation was observed between willpower and learning performance (r = 0.36, p = 0.036). No significant differences were observed in motor learning performance between male and female athletes (p = 0.93).

Conclusion:
The findings indicate that there are notable differences between the two groups of athletes who received positive and negative reinforcement. It is therefore recommended that intervention programmes be implemented with the objective of enhancing self-efficacy competencies, with a particular emphasis on the improvement of volition and stress load. It may be beneficial to enhance the physical performance of elite athletes by instructing coaches in more effective language and by developing athletes' self-efficacy competencies, which should be incorporated into subsequent coaching programmes.

Keywords:

Education, athletic performance, coach instruction, elite sport school.